Home video rentals were a $16 billion industry when Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph decided to get involved in 1997. Netflix's million-dollar idea was to build an online video rental service in the image of Amazon, an up-and-coming e-commerce player that was in the business of selling books.

Like all electronic devices, PCs don't last forever, and the parts inside them will eventually fail. While it's easy to replace a broken device, the same can't be said for the data stored in your machine.